by Emile Zola
‘Look here Narcisse, this has gone on far too long; you’re an absolute scoundrel! I’ve heard all about your swinish behaviour. You’ve married your mistress to Gueulin, and given them fifty thousand francs—the very sum you promised us. Nice, isn’t it? And that little wretch Gueulin cuts a fine figure, doesn’t he? As for you, you’re far worse, because you take the bread out of our mouths and squander your fortune; yes, you squander it, you rob us of money that was really ours for the sake of that bitch!’
Never before had she vented her feelings to such an extent as this. Hortense had to busy herself with her father’s medicine so as not to show her embarrassment, while Monsieur Josserand, brought to fever-pitch by the whole scene, tossed about restlessly on his pillows and murmured in a trembling voice:
‘Eléonore, be quiet, please! He won’t give us anything. If you want to say all that to him take him away, so that I can’t hear you!’
Berthe began to sob even louder as she joined in her father’s entreaties.
‘That’ll do, mamma; for father’s sake, do stop! Goodness gracious! How miserable I am at being the cause of all these quarrels! I’d much rather go away somewhere and die quietly!’
Then Madame Josserand bluntly put the question to Bachelard:
‘Now, will you or will you not give us the fifty thousand francs, so that your niece can hold her head up?’
In his bewilderment he sought to explain.
‘Listen to me for a moment. I caught Gueulin and Fifi together. What could I do? I had to marry them. It wasn’t my fault!’
‘Will you or will you not give us the dowry you promised us?’ she furiously repeated.
His speech faltered; he seemed so befuddled now that words failed him.
‘Can’t do it, I swear, can’t! Utterly ruined! Else I would, straightaway! Honest I would!’
She cut him short with a terrible gesture.
‘Very well!’ she exclaimed, ‘I’ll call a family council and declare you incapable of managing your affairs. When uncles become doddering idiots, it’s time to send them to an asylum.’
Whereupon Bachelard was at once greatly overcome. He looked round the room, which seemed to him very gloomy with its one flickering lamp; his gaze turned to the sick man who, supported by his daughters, was about to swallow a spoonful of some black liquid, and he immediately burst into tears, accusing his sister of never having understood him. Gueulin’s treachery had been quite grievous enough for him, he said. They knew how sensitive he was, and it was not right of them to ask him to dinner and then play on his feelings directly afterwards. Instead of the fifty thousand francs they could have every drop of blood in his veins!
Utterly worn out, Madame Josserand had decided to leave him alone when the maid announced Doctor Juillerat and Father Mauduit. They had met on the stairs and came in together. The doctor found Monsieur Josserand much worse, for he was still upset by the scene in which he had had to play a part. As the priest sought to take Madame Josserand into the drawing-room, having, as he said, a communication to make, she instinctively guessed where he had been and majestically replied that she was in the bosom of her family and could bear to hear everything. The doctor himself would not be in the way, for a physician was a confessor as well.
‘Madam,’ said the priest, with somewhat awkward gentleness, ‘what I’m doing is, as you’ll see, motivated by an ardent desire to reconcile two families.’
He spoke of God’s pardon, and of his great delight at being able to reassure honest hearts by putting a stop to so intolerable a state of affairs. He alluded to Berthe as a wretched child, which drew from her fresh tears, and there was such fatherly tenderness in all he said, and his expressions were so carefully chosen, that Hortense was not obliged to leave the room. However, he was obliged at last to touch on the subject of the fifty thousand francs. Husband and wife had, seemingly, only to kiss and make up, when he mentioned the formal condition of the payment of the dowry.
‘Father, forgive me for interrupting you,’ said Madame Josserand, ‘we’re deeply touched by your efforts. But we can never traffic in our daughter’s honour. Some people, too, have already made it up behind the child’s back! Oh! I know all about it; they were at daggers drawn and now they’re inseparable and abuse us from morning to night. No Father, such a bargain would be a disgrace.’
‘But madam,’ the priest ventured to observe, ‘it seems to me …’
She cut him short, as she went on with glorious assurance:
‘Listen! Here’s my brother, ask him what he thinks. Only a moment ago he said to me: “Here, Eléonore, I’ve brought you the fifty thousand francs. Do settle this wretched business.” Well, just ask him what my answer was. Get up, Narcisse! Get up, and tell the truth!’
Bachelard had gone to sleep again in an armchair at the end of the room. He stirred slightly and uttered a few incoherent words. Then, as his sister continued to address him, he placed his hand on his heart and stammered:
‘When duty calls we must obey. Family before everything!’
‘There, you hear what he says!’ cried Madame Josserand, triumphantly. ‘No money! It’s a disgrace! Just tell those people that we’re not in the habit of dying to avoid having to pay. The dowry’s here, and we would have paid it; but now that it’s being exacted as the price of our daughter the whole thing really has become too disgusting. Let Auguste take Berthe back first; then we’ll see what can be done.’
She had raised her voice to such a pitch that the doctor, who was examining his patient, had to tell her to be quiet.
‘Softly, please, madam,’ he said. ‘Your husband is in pain.’
Then, growing more embarrassed, Father Mauduit approached the bed and made a few sympathetic remarks. Then he withdrew without further allusion to the matter, hiding the confusion of his failure beneath a good-humoured smile, while his lip curled with vexation and disgust. As the doctor was leaving in his turn, he bluntly informed Madame Josserand that there was no hope; they ought to take the greatest possible care, as the least emotion might prove fatal. She was thunderstruck and went into the dining-room, to which Bachelard and the girls had already withdrawn, so as to leave Monsieur Josserand in peace as he seemed inclined to go to sleep.
‘Berthe,’ she murmured, ‘you’ve killed your father this time. The doctor has just told me.’
Then the three of them, seated round the table, began to cry, while Bachelard, also in tears, mixed himself some grog.
When Auguste was told of the Josserands’ answer he grew more furious than ever with his wife, and swore that he would send her packing with a few good kicks if she ever came and asked for forgiveness. But the fact was that he missed her greatly. There was a void in his life, and in his solitude and with all his new worries he seemed lost, for his present troubles were quite as serious as those of his married life. Rachel, whom he had kept on in order to annoy Berthe, robbed him and showed her bad temper now, being as coolly impudent as if she were his wife. He began to miss the many little pleasures of their life together, the evenings of mutual boredom, followed by costly reconciliations beneath warm sheets. Above all, he was heartily tired of Théophile and Valérie, who had made themselves at home downstairs and filled the whole shop with their importance. He even suspected them of taking money from the till without the least compunction. Valérie was not like Berthe; her delight was to sit enthroned at the pay-desk, but as it seemed to him, she had a way of attracting men openly, under the very eyes of her imbecilic husband, whose perpetual catarrh forever made his eyes dim with tears. So he preferred Berthe. At least she did not turn the shop into a thoroughfare for oglers. But besides this, another thing worried him. The Ladies’ Paradise was prospering, and threatened to rival his own business, where the takings grew daily less. True, he did not regret the loss of that wretched Octave; yet he was fair-minded enough to recognize his excellent business capabilities. How smoothly things would have gone if only there had been a better sort of understanding! Moods of tenderness and
regret assailed him, and there were moments when, sick of solitude and finding life quite empty, he felt as though he must go upstairs to the Josserands and take Berthe back from them for nothing.
Duveyrier, however, did not despair, but constantly urged Auguste to make up with his wife, being more and more grieved at the moral pall which the whole affair had cast over his property. He even affected to believe what Madame Josserand had told the priest—that if Auguste would take his wife back unconditionally, her dowry money would be paid the very next day. Then, since Auguste flew into a rage at such a proposal, the judge appealed to his heart. He would walk with him along the banks of the Seine, on his way to the Palais de Justice, preaching the doctrine of pardon for injuries in a voice half-choked with tears, trying to imbue him with the philosophy, at once dismal and cowardly, which sees the only possible happiness in tolerating the wife, since one could not do without her.
Duveyrier was visibly in decline. The whole of the Rue de Choiseul was depressed and uneasy at the sight of his lugubrious gait and pale face, on which the red blotches were getting larger and more inflamed. Some hidden grief seemed to be weighing him down. It was Clarisse, who was growing ever fatter, more insolent, and more presuming. As her bourgeois plumpness increased, he found her genteel airs and affected good-breeding more and more insupportable. She now forbade him to address her familiarly when members of her family were present, though in his presence she flirted in a most outrageous fashion with her piano-teacher, to his great distress. Twice he had caught her with Théodore; after losing his temper he had begged her, on his knees, to forgive him, accepting whatever terms she chose to make. Also, with a view to keeping him docile and submissive, she would constantly express her disgust at his blotchy face; and she had even thought of handing him on to one of her cooks, a buxom girl accustomed to rough work of all sorts. However, the cook declined to have anything to do with her master. Thus, each day life grew more and more difficult for Duveyrier at his mistress’s house, which had become a veritable hell. It was worse than his own home. The tribe of parasites—the mother, the big blackguard of a brother, the two little sisters, and even the invalid aunt—robbed him right and left, sponging on him mercilessly, and even emptying his pockets at night when he was asleep. Other things helped to aggravate the situation: he was running out of money, and trembled at the thought of being compromised in his professional capacity. True, he could not be dismissed from his post; but young barristers looked at him cheekily, which embarrassed him when administering justice. And when, driven away by the dirt and the noise, he fled in self-disgust from the Rue d’Assas and took refuge in the Rue de Choiseul, the hateful coldness of his wife plunged him into total despair. It was then that he would lose his head, glancing at the Seine on his way to the court, thinking that he might drown himself one night when emboldened to do so by some supreme feeling of anguish.
Clotilde had noticed her husband’s nervous state with some anxiety, and she felt incensed at this mistress of his who, despite her immoral conduct, still failed to make him happy. She, for her part, was much annoyed by a deplorable incident, the consequences of which revolutionized the whole house. On going upstairs one morning for a handkerchief, Clémence had caught Hippolyte and that little wretch Louise on her own bed; since then she had taken to boxing his ears in the kitchen at the least provocation, which had had a disastrous effect on the other domestics. The worst of it was that madame could no longer shut her eyes to the illicit relations that existed between her parlourmaid and her footman. The other servants laughed; gossip about the scandal spread among the tradespeople, and if she wished to keep the guilty couple it was absolutely necessary to make them marry. Thus, as she still found Clémence a most satisfactory maidservant, she thought of nothing but securing this marriage. To negotiate matters, however, seemed a somewhat delicate task, especially with lovers who were always scratching each other’s eyes out; so she determined to entrust the task to Father Mauduit, for in the circumstances he seemed to be marked out for the part of moral mediator. For some time past, indeed, Clotilde’s servants had caused her great anxiety. When in the country, she had become aware of the liaison between her big lout of a son Gustave and Julie. At first she thought of dismissing the latter—with regret, for she liked her cooking. Then, after much sage reflection, she kept her on, preferring that the young cub should have a mistress in her own house—a decent girl, who would never make a nuisance of herself. Elsewhere, one never could tell what sort of woman a lad got hold of, especially when, as in this instance, he started all too early. So she kept her eye on them without saying anything, and now the other two had begun to plague her with their wretched affair.
One morning it so happened that, as Madame Duveyrier was about to go and see Father Mauduit, Clémence informed her that the priest was just on his way to administer the last rites to Monsieur Josserand. The maid, being on the staircase, had crossed paths with the Holy Ghost, and had hurried back to the kitchen, exclaiming:
‘I knew He’d come back again this year!’
Then, alluding to the various misfortunes which had befallen the house, she added:
‘It has brought us all bad luck!’
This time the Holy Ghost had not come too late—an excellent portent for the future. Madame Duveyrier hurried to Saint-Roch, where she awaited the priest’s return. He listened to her, sadly and in silence, and then could not refuse to enlighten the footman and the chambermaid as to the immorality of their position. Besides, he would have to get back to the Rue de Choiseul very soon, as poor Monsieur Josserand would certainly not last through the night; and he hinted that in this circumstance, distressing though it was, he saw the possibility of a reconciliation between Auguste and Berthe. He would endeavour to arrange both matters at the same time. It was high time that the Almighty gave their efforts His blessing.
‘I have prayed, madam,’ said the priest. ‘The Lord God will prevail.’
That evening, indeed, at seven o’clock, Monsieur Josserand’s death-agony began. The whole family had assembled, except uncle Bachelard (whom they had sought vainly in all the cafés) and Saturnin, who was still in the Asile des Moulineaux. Léon, whose marriage, owing to his father’s illness, had unfortunately been postponed, showed dignity in his grief, while Madame Josserand and Hortense bore up bravely. Berthe, however, sobbed so loudly that, out of consideration to the sufferer, she escaped to the kitchen where Adèle, taking advantage of the general confusion, was drinking mulled claret. Monsieur Josserand died very quietly—a victim of his own honesty. He had lived a useless life, and he went off, worthy to the last, weary of all the petty things in life, done to death by the heartless conduct of the only human beings he had ever loved. At eight o’clock he stammered out Saturnin’s name; then, turning his face to the wall, he expired.
No one thought that he was dead, for they had all feared a long and dreadful death-agony. They waited for a while, letting him sleep. But, on finding that he was already cold, Madame Josserand, amid the general sobbing, began to scold Hortense, whom she had instructed to fetch Auguste with the aim of giving Berthe back to him just as her husband was about to breathe his last breath.
‘You never think of anything!’ she exclaimed, wiping her eyes.
‘But, mamma,’ said the girl, in tears, ‘none of us thought papa was going to die so soon! You told me not to go down and fetch Auguste before nine o’clock, so as to make sure he was there at the end!’
This quarrel helped to distract the family from their grief. Another thing that had gone wrong! They never managed to get anything right! Fortunately, though, there was the funeral, which might serve to reconcile husband and wife.
The funeral was a pretty decent one, but not as grand as Monsieur Vabre’s. Nor did it create nearly as much interest either in the house or in the neighbourhood, for Monsieur Josserand was not a landlord, but merely an easygoing soul whose death had not even troubled the slumber of Madame Juzeur. Marie, who the day before had been expecting her c
onfinement by the hour, was the only one who said how sorry she was not to be able to help the ladies in laying the poor old gentleman out. Downstairs Madame Gourd thought it sufficient to stand up and raise her hand as the coffin passed, without going to the door. Everybody, however, went to the cemetery: Duveyrier, Campardon, the Vabres, and Monsieur Gourd. They talked about the spring and how the crops had been affected by the recent heavy rains. Campardon was surprised to see Duveyrier looking so ill; and noticing his ghastly pallor as the coffin was lowered into the grave, the architect whispered:
‘Now he’s smelt churchyard mould. God save the house from more bereavements!’
Madame Josserand and her daughters had to be helped to their carriage. Léon, with uncle Bachelard’s help, was most attentive, while Auguste walked sheepishly in the rear and got into another carriage with Duveyrier and Théophile. Clotilde went with Father Mauduit, who had not officiated but put in an appearance at the cemetery so as to give the mourners a proof of his sympathy. The horses set off homewards more gaily; and Madame Duveyrier at once begged the priest to come back to the house with them, deeming the moment a favourable one. So he consented.
The three mourning coaches silently deposited the sorrowing relatives at the Rue de Choiseul. Théophile at once went back to Valérie, who, as the shop was shut, had remained behind to superintend a general cleaning.
‘You can pack up your things,’ he furiously exclaimed. ‘They’re all egging him on. I bet he’ll end by begging her forgiveness!’
They all felt the urgent need to put an end to this deplorable business. At least something should come out of all this misfortune. Auguste could easily see what they wanted. He sat alone, defenceless and confused. One by one the mourners slowly passed in under the porch, which was hung with black. No one spoke. On the staircase the silence was unbroken, a silence full of deep thought, as the crape petticoats sadly and softly ascended. In a last attempt at revolt Auguste hurried on ahead, intending to shut himself up in his own rooms, but Clotilde and the priest, who had followed, stopped him just as he was opening the door. Behind them on the landing stood Berthe, in deep mourning, accompanied by her mother and sister. All three had red eyes; Madame Josserand’s condition was, indeed, painful to behold.